Jan 19 2019

The Magical Faerie Door

On the 8th December 2018 I released my very first children’s novel! The Magical Faerie Door is the first in a magical series I am creating for children from 8 to 12, (though so far my older readers have been enjoying it too!) and I have to admit, I have been having a lot of fun!

I worked with an amazing artist, Rachel Miller, to bring the book to life, and I absolutely adore the cover image she created, as well as the smaller pencil illustrations that she created for each chapter. The book is available in hardback and on kindle, with the audiobook version (my first audiobook!) coming at the end of January 2019 on Audible.

We launched the book at the Abergavenny Cwtch Winter Wonderland fair, with the help of an amazing child-sized faerie door that was handmade by Jon Fellows of Sacred Tree Spirit. For the first time, I read out parts of the books to a very attentive audience, and we had so much fun! In my second reading of the day, I got to the end of the first chapter and the adults listening looked at me and went – well keep going! We need to know what happens!

As well as being a magical adventure that all ages seem to enjoy, The Magical Faerie Door touches on the subjects that are very close to faeries’ hearts – the environment and the destruction of it. We are destroying the natural world and are therefore eradicating the faeries and magic from this planet, and I feel that if we don’t inspire people to change their ways, then it won’t be long before there are no faeries left.

And I for one, do not want to live in a world with no faeries! It would be like living in a world with no colour, no music, no laughter and no joy.

Anyway, here are some photos of the book and the launch, if you would like a signed copy you can purchase one here, and you can also get copies on Amazon.

The faerie door to Eireaf was handmade by Jon Fellows

The hinges were forged in Russia!

The giant cupcake was made by myself and my talented mother, Sally

The cover art and interior illustrations were created by Rachel Miller

Reading my book to an audience for the first time!

I’m a Faerie Realm Advocate!

Nov 14 2014

Anyway, Angel

In preparation for creating the audiobook versions of the Visionary Collection, I was reading through Heaven dot com, and I realised that I hadn’t heard the song I mentioned in it – Anyway, Angel – for over ten years. The band who wrote the song, etcha, who are also mentioned in the book, was a band my brother played bass guitar in.

As a teenager I was basically their groupie, and I used to go to their practices and of course sit front row at all of their gigs, and even, on one occasion, sang the female parts of Pretty Fly for a White Guy on stage…

I have no idea why I am confessing these very embarrassing teenage stories here, I suppose I just started thinking about the times surrounding the writing of Heaven dot com. Part of me cannot believe it was fourteen years ago, and yet another part of me feels like it was a completely different lifetime.

The interesting thing is, that it was during my teenage years that I began channelling stories and poetry, even though at the time, I didn’t understand that was what I was doing. Years later I would find pages filled with words in my scrawl that I had no recollection of writing. I would find beginnings of stories I never finished and I would have no idea where the story had been heading or even what had inspired it. I also remember a story I started writing, that I think I may still have somewhere, about ghosts, and though I was doing well with it at first, I suddenly got a clear vision of how the story was going to end, and so I wrote the last chapter. What I learnt from that, is that I am very much a sequential writer – because though I loved the story, I had basically spoiled the ending for myself and now had no interest in writing the middle.

These days, if an idea for the ending comes up, I make notes, but I do not let myself write the ending, for fear that I will not write the middle. It has worked for me so far! It’s interesting how writing habits are developed, and the reasons why creative people do things in a certain way.

Enough reminiscing! If you want to hear the song, you can hear it below 🙂

Jul 4 2014

The Elphite Audio Book

For quite some time now, I have been asked for the audio book versions of my books, for people who either find it difficult to read ebooks/paperbacks or for people who like to listen to audio books while travelling, and though it seemed like a good idea, I have not got my head around doing it, until now.

It was mostly the technical side that put me off, as you are aware, being an Indie Author means doing pretty much everything for yourself, and the idea of recording, narrating, editing and uploading entire books just seemed a bit beyond me. But recently I managed to work out a way to do it myself, and so I have recorded, edited and uploaded the first chapter of The Elphite to SoundCloud, to see what feedback I get on it. If it’s positive (or at least constructive!) then I will continue recording and upload it and sell it on Amazon.

So here it is, the Prologue and first Chapter, please let me know what you think!